Phobia
by DemonSurfer
Summary: 'Phobia: a persistent, irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that leads to a compelling desire to avoid it.' A series of nine drabbles starring the Stunticons and Combaticons.
1. Opthalmophobia

**A/N: **This story was started approximately one year ago, around early November. And while at the moment it's not quite complete, the fact that there are now nine days left until the end of the year was too good an opportunity to pass up. I need to get this one finished and moved out, and this seems like the best time to do so. This story will be updated daily until the end of the year.

Who better to start a series about phobias than good ol' Breakdown?

* * *

**Breakdown**

_Ophthalmophobia: the fear of being stared at. _

* * *

It was the eyes.

He didn't know why. Such a crippling weakness, and he didn't know what caused it. Why he was afraid, _terrified_ of the eyes.

Staring at him. Judging him.

Breakdown had tried to rationalize his fear. It was unfounded, unwarranted, unreasonable. He realized this. In the small quiet places it was easy to recognize the fear as irrational. While he was safe and alone, the fear wasn't as great, and he wondered why the staring and the eyes bothered him at all. He was a Stunticon! Terror of the roads, destroyer of the Autobots! He deserved to be watched and envied and admired. While he was safe, he wasn't afraid of the eyes.

He couldn't be safe all of the time.

Outside, the stares followed him. Peeping out of air vents and lurking in shadowy corners. Optics, real and imaginary, watched him constantly, waiting for him to trip up and crack and live up to his designation. There was no escaping the stares in such a small and crowded base. No safe places to hide.

Sometimes he faltered, and the eyes got the best of him.

His team had tried to keep it a secret, but it wasn't something that could be hidden easily. Not when the very optics on a mech's face could send him spiraling into a panic, a panic that would attract more stares and drive his terror even higher in a vicious cycle. Eventually they slipped. The weakness was revealed, and the others latched onto it like the finest high grade. Scrabbling and clawing at the crack in the Stunticons' armor, trying their damnedest to force it open wider. To create new weak points and more fissures, more to exploit. They were Megatron's favorites after all, created by the warlord's very own servos, and plenty of bots would be more than happy to remove them from the bigger picture. To take them down a few notches. To break them down, crush them, grind them into powder.

Breakdown hated being the weakness.

Motormaster had tried to "help" him get over his terror. A weakness like his was insulting, infuriating. It had to be eliminated by any means necessary.

The stares hadn't gotten any less terrifying. Hook eventually tired of repairing him.

After Motormaster's failure his other teammates had offered their own dubious forms of aid. It was almost touching, how much they wanted to help.

Which was a lie. They were just tired of being picked on.

They had tried rewards and mantras and blindfolds. Nothing had worked. The staring still followed him, judging, laughing. Eventually they had given up, and he was left to fend for himself against the other 'Cons. Easy prey no matter where he went.

He didn't know why the staring bothered him so much. He _wished_ he knew. That there was some reason or another, that he wasn't just glitched. That there was a cause for his shaking. For looking over his shoulder constantly. For never recharging completely because _something _could have crept into his quarters and stood over him in his defenseless state only to disappear as soon as he came online. For seizing up mid-battle just because some squishy inferior organic was staring at him and wouldn't stop and then Motormaster would come over to apply his _therapy_ again.

There were eyes everywhere, and there was nothing he could do about it but find a safe place to hide. They were staring, and all he could do was cower.

Some fears were meant to be conquered.

Some were not.

And he would never escape the eyes.


	2. Claustrophobia

**A/N: **Consistantly, the Combaticon chapters were longer than those for the Stunticons. I believe it is because the Combaticons have a past they can pull from, no matter how little information they end up sharing.

You would think that this one would be as straight forward as Breakdown's, but Vortex decided to twist it around on me.

* * *

**Vortex**

_Claustrophobia: the fear of confined spaces. _

* * *

The simple pleasures in life were often underrated.

Built during the Great War, Vortex was one of only two Combaticons who had no personal memories of Cybertron's so-called "Golden Age" (possibly one of three, though it was _so_ hard to get Swindle to divulge any information about his past). Thus he had no affinity for what others called the "good old days". While lesser mechs bemoaned the swill that made up their daily rations and compared it to "real" Energon refined from energy sources more efficient than crude Earth fuels, the interrogator was content to sit back and observe. To listen.

What would the Autobots think if they knew their enemies whined like spoiled sparklings over something they could not have?

True, the war had increased the average 'bot's appreciation of the simple things far beyond what any peacetime could achieve. A cube of the most impure, polluted, sludgy Energon was finer than any Golden Age high-grade when the alternative was starvation. A hard, narrow, creaking berth coated in the unsavory fluids of its previous occupant was the most comfortable resting place when the only other option was the ground. A warm body willing to caress and bite and reciprocate (or not, there was always the exception) in the most essential and basic bonding activity was preferable to working the joystick solo. Even day to day functioning was a commodity in a time when over sixty percent of Cybertronians were rusting away on battlefields both new and ancient, stripped of all useful parts so that others may continue to defy their eventual fates.

The simple pleasures were the best pleasures. And Vortex had always held an appreciation for the simple pleasures.

Granted, as his hobbies could be considered a bit "abnormal" so too was his definition of pleasure skewed. The sweet sound of a mech's agony as his limbs were slowly and excruciatingly torn off wire by wire and plate by plate. The stutter of an energon pump as it tried desperately to force vital fluid through a rapidly depressurizing circulatory system... Beautiful.

Still, he could understand the lure of more acceptable gratifications. Energon, a place to rest, 'bots to frag.

Space to fly.

Vortex was a rotary mech. One of many flight models in the great Decepticon army. Not as fast as a Seeker, not as strong as a shuttle, but capable of flying in any direction and vertical take off. He could also use his rotary blades as weapons, though that was generally frowned upon due to the damage it caused to such vital and sensitive equipment. Which really didn't bother him since he had access to an almost unlimited supply of replacements, and what fun was life if there wasn't a little pain involved?

Flight models were flight models, however, and as such they all shared a common pleasure.

The sky.

It didn't matter if that sky was a rich thick blue of nitrogen and oxygen and a handful of other elements, or a thin stale red poisoned with the ash and smoke of burning cities. The sky was the sky, and there was no way to describe the rush of displaced air over a fuselage as engines were pushed to their extremes. The delight in cutting power to rotary blades almost a mile above a battlefield and free falling, riding the fine line between life and a rather large crater. The power to go wherever you wanted and frag anyone who said otherwise.

To have the sky was to have freedom.

Of course, every pleasure came with its own risks, and loving the sky was no different.

It was a common trait, one that was accepted by scientists worldwide as just being a result of flier programming. All aerial models, without exception, did not do well indoors. The small places, the dark places; all were equally terrifying to those that held the sky. To be placed _inside_ was to no longer have the freedom of _outside_. It was one of the reasons that the city of Vos was so famous for its large towers of glittering crystal and glass. Being able to see the sky gave one the illusion that the walls did not exist.

Even that was a risk. Not seeing the walls did not make them disappear.

Vortex had once observed a strange event while undercover in a human city. A small organic bird had flown into the hangar he was hiding in. The humans had attempted to chase it out the doors, but instead it returned again and again to a tiny window near the ceiling. Eventually it had broken its own neck on the invisible barrier, too caught up in trying to reclaim the sky to consider another exit.

Vortex had been in several prisons over the course of his long life. Many were of the standard sort, four walls with only a tiny patch of sky visible through a high window. Some were worse, just a small dim box with bars that crackled and spit. He had seen the inside of many brigs, Autobot and Decepticon, and they were identical except for the color of the walls.

A prison, however, did not need physical dividers to be effective. The worst had no walls, and offered no hope of escape. A prison of the mind and loyalty through programming could clip a mech's wings as surely as a tiny dark box. Better, as a box offered the hope of the outside world.

Was it any wonder that he enjoyed the small pleasures, when the greatest one of all had already been taken from him?

He flew and killed and did what he could to proclaim his freedom as often as possible.

It made the glass walls seem a little bit clearer.


	3. Athazagoraphobia

**A/N: **This one was restarted more times than any of the others, and I am glad it's done.

To me, Drag Strip really is the middle child. Not as violent as Motormaster, or level headed as Dead End, or demanding as Breakdown, or effective as Wildrider.

Also, I hope you're having a very merry Christmas.

* * *

**Drag Strip**

_Athazagoraphobia: the fear of being ignored or forgotten._

* * *

He was the best.

He knew that, and it wasn't a secret. He was the fastest, flashiest Decepticon, and he knew that too. Made sure everyone else knew it as well, so when the time came they would know what to say and how to act. How to praise him.

Drag Strip was a racer. A machine purpose built for the track and asphalt, of pushing engines into the red and burning rubber. More than that, he was built to win. To savor the sweet taste of victory while everyone else sucked his exhaust. While other, lesser vehicles were still at the starting line, spinning their tires and wearing off their treads, he would have already crossed the finish line. He was a king, a god among mechs, and thus he deserved their attention.

Because if he wasn't the best, then what was he?

In one of life's quirks, he supposed that he was Breakdown's opposite. Where the Lamborghini cowered and hid from the eyes, Drag Strip sought them out. He all but threw himself before his audience, twisting and contorting himself for their pleasure. He had to be great, be greater than great, to hold their optics. To make sure that they watched only _him_. He would polish his plating until it cracked, push his engine until it spewed smoke and fire, and it wouldn't matter as long as he kept their attention.

As long as he wasn't ignored.

It was a secret. He knew it, held it close to his spark, and he wasn't ever going to share. He was a Decepticon, and it was a weakness, and he would be torn to shreds. Even his team wasn't allowed to know. Not with Motormaster at their core, a roiling mass of fury and destruction, ready to rip any of them apart should he find their numerous flaws unbearable.

What would the beast do, should he learn one of his playthings was nothing more than the middle child, pushing his siblings down for a little attention?

He _needed_ the eyes. He needed the shouts and chants and jeers. The insults and praise that came with standing at the starting line, engines roaring and tires spinning. The adoration and acclaim of the winner's circle, where all others had been proven as inferior and only one ruled supreme.

Drag Strip had learned an important lesson early on in his function, or maybe his frame had learned and told his spark. Winners were celebrated, glorified, and acknowledged. Losers were ignored, pushed aside, and forgotten. If you won, you were a king.

If you lost, you were nothing. And he couldn't stand being nothing.

The silence. The shadows. Where there had once been cheering crowds, now only empty seats. Comrades who turned away, presenting him with the view of their shiny backs and refusing to just _look at him_. To acknowledge his existence. Nothing was failure, was less than failure, because failure gave you the opportunity to rise again. Nothing was...nothing.

He would do whatever it took to prevent that, to keep the spotlight on him and him alone. His speed and paint and power were pointless if there was no one to watch. The audience was as much a part of him as he was of it, and without that energy, he was only half a mech. Just a golden shell, going through the motions while the beast cracked his whip and shouted orders.

If you kill an Autobot and no one is around to see him fall, does it really matter?

Drag Strip needed to be the best. It didn't matter that a Seeker could hit Mach 2.5, and a shuttle could break atmosphere. It didn't matter that Breakdown could shake a mech's engine apart with his sonics, and Wildrider could tear anyone open with his unpredictable maneuvers. It didn't matter that Motormaster was the cruelest thing to ever crawl out of the pit, and his master a looming presence that added weight to his blows.

He was the best.

He had to be.


	4. Pistanthrophobia

**A/N:** Similar to how a liar would suspect that those around him are lying, I imagine that Swindle would be suspicious of others trying to take advantage of him.

* * *

**Swindle**

_Pistanthrophobia: the fear of trusting people._

* * *

It all came down to basic programming.

And before being part of a gestalt, before being a soldier, or before being a Decepticon, Swindle was a con man.

It wasn't as if he didn't enjoy his function. There was nothing quite as satisfying as pulling a successful job. To prove how much quicker, better, more clever you were than your fellow mech. He had learned, both on his own and under his mentor's tutelage, just how to worm his way into another bot's trust. A couple of casual comments and he was a close confidant. High grade and a few lingering touches opened previously locked doors. Names could lead to credits and contacts and dealers and customers; all whirling together in a constant game of success and failure. Of swim and sink. Of give and take and take and take. It was dangerous, exciting, deadly, thrilling, profitable, and best of all: _easy._

Too easy.

In the con game it was so easy for the tables to be turned. For the player to become the played. After all, who knew a con man's head better than another con man?

Swindle realized this. Knew it from the moment he had robbed his mentor blind after less than a vorn under her instruction. It was so easy to get caught up in the whirl and rush and excitement of the game, of being better and faster and smarter than everyone else, that you forgot there were other players. Too busy using others to notice if you were being used. After all, it only took the right words, right names, right touch, to grab hold of someone's trust and twist and use it until there was nothing left.

Swindle knew this so very well.

A lot could be done with a bot's trust. He knew; he'd done most of it. Reputations ruined. Fortunes lost. Enslaved and caged and raped and killed; it could and did and would happen.

Swindle had been around for a long time, and had been playing the game for even longer. There were plenty of people he'd slagged off over the years, too many to count. Enforcers, soldiers, civilians, mobs, slavers, bounty hunter, and more that didn't have names. He'd been shot and stabbed and tortured and imprisoned and so many other things that he never wanted to think about. Didn't want to remember.

It was all a game of give and take, and coming out ahead meant taking more than you were given. But now the risk was too high. There were too many enemies, too high a chance for betrayal.

He couldn't risk trusting anyone. He knew, _intimately_ knew how easy it was to slip into another bot's head and use them like your own servo. How having a firm grip on their trust was more effective than any loyalty or mind control programming.

He just couldn't take that risk.

It was so much better to place one's trust in something tangible like credits. Currency couldn't betray you, not on its own. It could be spent or gambled or lost, but not by itself. Credits gave you power and insurance and a back-up plan. Credits could buy trust without trading away your own in return.

Yes, he'd take credits over other bots any day.

His team knew that. Onslaught knew. Probably knew the reasoning behind it, the smart fragger. He had been with this team for a long time now. Possibly even longer than any other, though he could never be sure. They knew and respected the various idiosyncrasies of one another. Had to, to survive this long. Especially since they had been forced into a gestalt bond together.

It didn't change anything.

He still couldn't trust them.

He had tested them once. So over-charged that he could barely remember his home planet, he had pushed the limitations of their fragile team. Shoved at the boundaries of what he could and couldn't do until he'd crossed an oh so important line in the sand. He got his answer, and had paid for it in full.

They were surprised. Shocked. Hurt. They had trusted that he wouldn't dare pull that slag with them. That they were a team and exempt from that sort of behavior.

It scared him a little.

Trust is a two-way street. His team had been blindsided by his betrayal even though they knew him better than anyone else in the galaxy. Knew what he was and what he did.

If his team could trust in a con artist, there was nothing preventing the opposite from being true. He was just as susceptible to falling into the trap of familiarity, and just as easy to backstab.

He couldn't risk it.

There was simply too much at stake.


	5. Isolophobia

**A/N:** I know having a phobia is the least of Wildrider's issues, but I think there would be a few things that would compound his insanity.

This one was amazingly fun to write.

* * *

**Wildrider**

_Isolophobia: the fear of solitude, being alone. _

* * *

He was a pretty princess.

No, wait. That was wrong.

He was a pineapple under the sea.

Yes, that was better. Or maybe he was a giant robot that turned into a car and smashed other giant robots that also turned into cars. And sometimes he stuck to four other giant robots to form an even _bigger_ giant robot that smashed the regular sized giant robots.

No. No, he was definitely a pineapple.

A very crazy pineapple.

Wildrider knew he was insane. It wasn't something that was easy to overlook, even from the inside. Merging into Menasor gave him a brief impression of his teammates' minds; a glimpse of what, by comparison, a stable and sane psyche looked like. How the mentally sober interpreted the world.

He thought it was very boring.

There was none of the sliding, blurring, smearing of his own world. None of the additional faces and names and voices to liven things up. The thoughts connected by the barest gossamer thread, the delicate structure of his mind resembling an organic spider's web. Only order, logic, and stability. Well, compared to him, anyway. He was sure the other Decepticons thought his whole team was crazy, but he'd never merged with any of them to check.

Besides, he was sure that the Seekers were about a million times crazier.

Yes, Wildrider knew he was insane. Knew it, embraced it, loved it. The crazy was useful and exciting. Twisting his world into unrecognizable pretzels of color and light and sound. It could be harnessed and directed, making him into an unstoppable and unpredictable force.

If he was careful. If he refrained from testing that porous cracking fracturing wall in his mind that kept the _real_ crazy out.

If he stayed away from the silence.

Wildrider didn't like silence. It was empty, and echoed with its emptiness. Silence meant that Motormaster was angry and about to let them know _how _angry he was. Silence meant that they had lost and there was no Energon and everyone was too tired and injured to do anything but half-heartedly curse the Autobots. Silence meant there was nothing to distract his fractured, splintered processor from turning in on itself.

Silence meant that he was alone.

Wildrider liked being alone even less than he liked silence. At least sometimes the silence softened a little, and it was Drag Strip passed out after watching a squishy movie or Dead End reading a data pad. Sometimes the silence wasn't that silent, and that was okay.

Being alone was being alone.

When he was alone, there was nothing for him to do but think. His turbulent, twisting mind feeding on itself like a snake devouring its own tail. Broken thoughts splintering into smaller and smaller pieces until his mind was hardly more than fluttering gauzy tatters of its already fragile construction. Dragged along into a nightmarish distortion of the world; unwilling to follow but unable to stop. Voices that were normally so amiable and quiet became louder, shrieking, demanding, mocking. Colors that were once hypnotic and soothing bleeding together, pooling into a garish putrefaction of reality.

While he was alone, there was nothing but himself for company, and he made a pretty poor companion.

And that wall, the one that kept out the worst of the insanity, would crumble and flake and ooze and become just that much weaker. And he would get a taste of what was behind it.

Wildrider didn't mind listening to Drag Strip's incessant bragging, or Breakdown's nervous rattling, or Dead End's mournful droning. He didn't mind human television or the non-sentient cars or the open highway. He didn't mind Motormaster's fists or Megatron's fists or the Autobot's fists.

It kept away the silence.

And he wasn't alone.


	6. Agoraphobia

**A/N: **What else would the logical opposite of a shuttle's very function be but crowded places?

* * *

**Blast Off**

_Agoraphobia: the fear of crowded places or of leaving a safe place. _

* * *

He couldn't deal with crowds.

It wasn't that surprising, really. He had been sparked as a shuttle. Specialized and purpose built for the demands of space travel. The absolute cold of the void and the searing radiation of stars. The stress of gravity multiplied many times to escape and reenter a planet's atmosphere. The millions of calculations and calibrations necessary to not just fly, but to fall in a carefully-controlled arc around a planet. The ability to cope with long cycles of no sound, no company; nothing but the void and distant stars as companions.

Blast Off was sure his problem stemmed from that last bit of coding.

It made sense. Shuttles were programmed to handle the emptiness of space, and the logical opposite of that would be crowds. That was why he had always despised the markets back on Cybertron. Hundreds of other mechs, all crammed together in such a relatively tiny space. The smell of wax and oil and energon and coolant, all blended and magnified into an almost physical force. Different dialects and languages from all over the galaxy melding together with the stamping of pedes and squeal of metal against metal and whir of cooling fans. Chassis of a whole spectrum of colors and beyond shifting and chafing against one another in a dizzying, seething mass of bodies.

Chaos.

And to _willingly_ join that mad scramble? To take delight in the rush and muddle as Swindle and Vortex so clearly did? To allow himself to be subjected to a hundred strange bodies all roiling and swarming and pressing against his own until he was forced to either move with the tide or be crushed by it?

He'd rather fly into a sun.

In the vorns between Cybertron and Earth, Blast Off's tolerance for other 'bots had dropped from a couple hundred to less than six. Apparently the detention center had left its mark on his psyche as well, loathe as he was to admit it. He had worked as public transport for Primus sake! That alone had required a considerable amount of coping ability, not even speaking of the early portion of the war where the barracks had been full to bursting with fresh recruits and acquiring personal space was mostly a matter of removing the competition.

But now... now he found himself nervous whenever his team was assigned to the main H.Q. He dreaded having to navigate those cramped, garish hallways while dodging or being run in to by other mechs. He stayed in his quarters whenever possible, and jumped at any solo space missions.

Space was safe. It was infinitely vast, cold, empty. While in space Blast Off could relax. There was nothing that could touch him there, no enemy he couldn't best. It was his element and his home, far more than any part of Cybertron had ever been. In space he was far away from the various annoyances of his team and faction, and could forget that there was even a war going on.

He knew spending so much time in orbit wasn't good for the processor, even for a shuttle. But he'd take the loneliness of the void over the tight suffocating anxiety brought about by the Decepticon H.Q. any day.

There were two other shuttles on Earth. Sometimes Blast Off caught himself wanting to speak with them, wanting to ask them how they coped. How could they stand being on Earth all of the time. Trapped in their miniscule bases, unable to keep from bumping into other mechs over the course of the orn. How they could stand refueling at shift change, when the rec room would be at its fullest with rowdy, loutish, _noisy_ mechs, sucking all the space out of the area until there wasn't enough room to move. Not enough room to breathe.

It was a pointless whim. He would cut off his own leg and give it to Vortex as a present before he attempted to have a civil conversation with Astrotrain. Skyfire would probably just shoot him and run away.

He would bear it then. No one else needed to know, and if his team suspected anything they had so far remained mute about it.

He would stand the tight, grasping feeling that wrapped around his spark whenever he was forced to associate with the crowds.

And as often as he could, he would escape from it all.

That was how he coped.


	7. Apeirophobia

**A/N: **I think this was the weakest chapter I wrote. I don't know, Dead End's head proved to be much harder to get into than I thought.

* * *

**Dead End**

_Apeirophobia: the fear of infinity. _

* * *

The end was inevitable.

And he was glad of it.

It was just logical reasoning. Sooner or later everything ended. Rather sooner, now, as they were embroiled in a pointless vicious war, where every day could be a mech's last. And for what? A few meager scraps of Energon to fuel another day, only to have to repeat the motion again and again until they ceased to function. Or better yet, they could be blown to bits by an Autobot bomb or friendly fire. There was always the chance of a stray shot piercing a laser core or processor, or the simple unpredictability of mechanical failure in the midst of battle, where repair would be impossible and deactivation would be slow and certain.

It was just a matter of time.

It never ceased to amazed Dead End how, out of all of the Decepticons, he was the only one that could recognize the futility of their struggles. Why did they bother fighting against the Autobots when they would all eventually crumble into rust, regardless of faction? Why did they try to resurrect a planet that had already mercifully slipped from the mortal coil? Why was Megatron so insistent on ruling a universe that would eventually implode or explode or be consumed by some nightmarish entity from Cybertron's oldest legends?

There was simply no point to it.

Dead End's fatalism had become something of a joke amongst the Decepticons. He couldn't figure out what it was about hearing the absolute truth that they found so amusing. Perhaps the majority of Megatron's forces simply lacked the necessary processing power to realize their own mortality. Maybe it was his choice of words they found entertaining, or his elaborate explanations on how exactly the end would come. Maybe they simple didn't believe him, and were under the delusion of immortality.

Immortality. Now _there_ was a terrifying concept.

To remain unchanged while everything around you met its own demise. To watch, unable to interfere or adjust fate, as everyone or everything you have ever known crumbled into dust. As cities were built on the ruins of ruins, and were eventually built over themselves. As wars erupted and peace reigned, all in a never-ending cycle of death and rebirth.

To live alone when everything else was gone.

No.

It couldn't, shouldn't happen. Everything met an inevitable end. It was simple how the universe worked.

There was no room for immortality. No room for infinity.

Let them mock him. Dead End didn't care. He knew the inescapable, indelible truth. Knew there was an end to everything and embraced that truth. Someday, maybe soon maybe not, he would cease functioning. His processor would stop, his spark would fade, and his frame would grey. He would die, and he was glad of it.

Dying meant he didn't have to face infinity.


	8. Katagelophobia

**A/N:** When working with Brawl I found that he tended to lean more towards 'anger' than 'fear', so his phobia isn't as 'phobic' as I would have hoped.

Only one more until the end.

* * *

**Brawl**

_Katagelophobia: the fear of ridicule._

* * *

He wasn't stupid.

He didn't think of himself as a genius, though. One of the last things he wanted to be thought of as was a genius, a nerd, an intellect. Intelligence always seems to bring its own special kind of stupidity along with it. All one had to do was look at Starscream to see a perfect example.

Brawl wasn't a genius. He wasn't stupid enough for that.

There were different types of intellects. There were those with book smarts and battle smarts and tactical smarts and street smarts. Business geniuses who could sell you your own processor before you knew it was missing. Artistic wonders who could, with a few strokes of a brush, capture a mech's soul and bring onlookers to tears with joy and sorrow and other emotions.

Supposedly. Maybe. He had never had much interest in the fine arts.

Brawl preferred those with a useful talent. A tactician who could plan for a hundred different contingents and change strategy at a moment's notice. A warrior who knew how to inspire his fellow men into the fiery heart of battle and make then believe with all their spark that they were gods and couldn't be touched. An interrogator who could strip a mech's processor of all useful information within moments and never leave a trace.

True genius. Useful. Important.

Brawl didn't have any of that.

He was a tank, literally and figuratively. Not the fastest thing on the battlefield, sure, but you didn't need to be fast when you could blow half a mech's torso off at two thousand yards. And he was tough enough to take a direct hit from just about any weapon other than Megatron's fusion cannon and receive hardly worse than cosmetic damage. His alt mode could cross any terrain except mud with ease, and had enough power to drag prisoners or comrades or stuff that needed dragging.

He was strong. He was tough. He was _useful_, in his own specific tank-like way.

And yet they called him stupid.

Brawl found that very confusing and more than a little hypocritical. It wasn't as if the common Decepticon could be considered intelligent, or even very smart. He'd seen Seekers fly into walls. Constructicons blow themselves up. Cassettes pick seriously one-sided fights.

And for some reason, that didn't seem to matter to the other Decepticons. They seemed to assume that a mech's speed was an accurate representation of his processor power. That because he was big and slow on the outside, he must be the same on the inside. That he was only good for a laugh and for combining with his team members. That he has no use on his own.

It was _frustrating_. He wasn't very smart, yes, but he wasn't stupid. He didn't need to be mocked by mechs that he could deactivate with his bare hands. It was annoying to enter a room and hear chuckling in the corner as some 'bot recounted whatever he had done on that particular mission. And yes, sometimes he got confused and went the wrong direction or blew up the wrong target or ran over a teammate. But in the end it really didn't count for much.

He was a war machine, rolled off the assembly line specifically to fight for the Decepticons. He didn't _need_ an advanced processor to handle whatever 'bots did with an advanced processor. He had a targeting computer and a battle computer and enough firepower to destroy anything standing in front of point B when he left point A.

He was useful in a very specific way, and that way did not include higher processing functions.

Most of the other Decepticons were exactly the same as him. Megatron's army was primarily war builds, and war builds were not known for their great intelligence. They were all built to fight, to live and die on the battlefield in a glorious clash of metal against metal. And sure there was the occasional mutant that made the common fighter look less intelligent then a pre-programmed drone. Bastards like Starscream, a scientist _and _a military model who could defeat almost any of his subordinates in both war games and mind games. But for the most part, they were all the same. Equals.

They weren't _better _than him, no matter what delusions they were operating under.

He was built for war, and that was all that mattered.


	9. Atychiphobia

**A/N: **And now, the end! I thank all of you who had read, reviewed, alerted, and favorited this collection. And a nod to the Guest who correctly guessed the last phobia.

The gestalt leaders. Two different leadership methods, two different versions of the same fear. Onslaught fears what another failure will do to him and his team, while Motormaster dreads the day his team inevitably frags up badly enough to be knocked from their podium.

* * *

**Onslaught & Motormaster**

_Atychiphobia: the fear of failure_

* * *

Failure is not an option.

He's heard it over and over again. From the Enforcer's "never submit" to the Decepticon's "we will rise above", the phrase has stuck with him for his entire function.

Failure is not an option.

As a tactician, Onslaught knows that the phrase itself is flawed. There must always been room in the calculations for error. The unexpected happens. Your informant is discovered, or your supplies run out early, or the enemy is stronger than your initially thought. You could construct the greatest plan ever to see the light of day, and it meant nothing if a single mech out of place brought the entire operation crumbling down. A good plan must be foolproof, feasible, and above all, flexible.

Failure is a teacher, though a cruel one. A femme who was more than ready to gobble up those who couldn't or wouldn't learn from their mistakes. To fail meant being forced to adapt, to rise above your short comings and return twice as deadly. It was a useful and invaluable tool, no matter how hard it was to accept.

But there came a time when failure was no longer an option, even for him.

It wasn't a question of not _wanting_ to fail, but that he _couldn't_. Not anymore, with the consequences far in excess of the crime. A compounding interest of karmic justice, and he wasn't sure if he could survive its punishment.

His first major failure had ended with he and his team arrested, their frames deactivated, and their personality components ripped from their helms. Their reward for attempted treason had been a thousand years of silence, of nothing but memories and speculation to occupy their minds. It had broken him, broken _them_ in a way that no one would ever know. A whole host of psychological issues, and it was all his fault. Because he hadn't planned for failure, because his faith in his own abilities had been so absolute that he hadn't allowed himself to look for pitfalls.

The devil's in the details, as they say. His plan had come down like a house of cards, and they had been boxed.

He knew his team resented him for that. It had been _his_ plan, after all. They were the cogs and gears, but he had been the one to flip the switch on the machine. They were the fingers, and he was the hand that controlled them, directed their movement. The hand that had let them down, allowed them to be captured at their weakest moment.

And on the heels of one failure, while they had still been recovering their breath, he had let them down a second time.

It had been a flawed plan, a hasty objective cobbled together from impressions and second-hand information. They hadn't even the time to recognize Cybertron for the husk it had become before he was trying to destroy all life on that tiny miserable planet. _Burn it down_, he had thought, _until there's nothing left_.

His team had been uneasy, cautious. Perhaps it had been a side effect of the box. A thousand years of silence, to suddenly be thrown back into the waking world and forced into service again. Something in him had snapped, something that had been long since bent to the point of being unrecognizable, and for once he had tossed all caution to the wind. There had been no plan, no carefully calculated risk. Just revenge, and he had dragged his team into it with him.

_Let them burn!_

Another failure, another punishment. The shackles of the Decepticons had tightened around them, invading their minds with forced complacency and an insurance against rebellion. _Coercion_, it had been called, and indeed it was. Signing their lives away to a cause they had long since lost faith in.

His first failure had resulted in the loss of his mind. The second failure had resulted in the loss of his free will.

He _couldn't_ fail a third time.

Megatron was not a forgiving mech. The silvery words and grandiose plans had been a ruse he had long since seen torn to shreds, discarded along with so many useless machines. Behind the curtain of civility had lurked a monster, forged in the mines and tempered in the arena, and there was no spark in his chest that could be swayed by pleas for _m__ercy. _It was a monster that Onslaught had once willingly followed, but now found himself groveling before its pedes. It was humiliating, made even more so by how easily he had allowed himself to be enslaved. A mark on the frame was temporary, but the scars it left were there forever.

Onslaught knew that the only thing keeping him alive at this point was Megatron's expectations. The mechs he had once seen imprisoned had been returned to him improved, a peace offering he gladly accepted from his second. With the gestalt programming forcing them into an unnatural bond, they were once again _useful_ to the warlord. A new tool, a plaything for him to use as he saw fit. As long as they remained useful, they would remain safe and secure in the monster's grasp. If they angered him, if they _failed_, there would be no last minute plans to save them from Megatron's wrath.

Once, failure had simply been a black mark on his record. Now it was a matter of life and death.

And he couldn't take that risk.

* * *

There was always a risk.

In battle, one risked being killed by the enemy or friendly fire. A wound risked infection, and a damaged limb risked amputation. A commander risked betrayal by his men, and a soldier risked being abandoned by his superior.

Sometimes, the risk was created through external forces. Other times, existence itself was the the cause.

The Stunticons had been created by Megatron. The warlord had personally selected each of their frames, lovingly modifying them with his own servos to support transformation and a spark and a processor. He had built them to be his perfect warriors, to fill a gap in his ranks that had allowed the Autobots to slip through time and time again. He had given them names, and he had given them life.

Without Megatron, there would be no Motormaster, and that fact alone was enough to win his eternal loyalty.

The Stunticons were young. They didn't have the same scars as the other Decepticons, crisscrossed over both frame and spark until hardly any of the original was left. They didn't have the memories of lives and lovers long lost to fire and faction, dark shadows that weighed heavily on the processor and flickered in the optics. They were without _loss_, their entire existence moving forward on a new road, and for that they were resented.

Megatron was but one mech, and the Decepticons were many, and the Stunticons were hated by the many as they held the favor of the one. To have favor was to have a pardon for minor mistakes. For a light strike with the lash rather than a brutal beating. Outside the light of Megatron's favor, the other Decepticons slunk and spit and envied, ready to tear the gestalt apart if given even the slightest opportunity.

Motormaster didn't intend to give them that chance.

He knew what his team thought of him. They were a team, closer than brothers, and he had seen into their sparks. He wasn't afraid to hold them down, to tear at whatever pathetic barriers they tried to put up until he got the answers he wanted. They saw him as a beast, a black hole that devoured everything without mercy. An evil they would love to amputate, if it didn't mean killing the entire body in return.

The gestalt could function without a leg or an arm, but Motormaster was the _core_. He was irreplaceable, unshakeable. It was his fury that propelled and directed the rest of them. He was the one who held the chains, loosing them only when _he_ felt it was best. A weaker mech might feel some sort of remorse or pity for his actions, but Motormaster wasn't weak.

He couldn't afford to be weak, and neither could his team.

Motormaster knew risk, and he knew reward. And what he knew was that his team were in a precarious position within the Decepticon hierarchy. Favored by their leader, hated by their comrades, it only took a slight _push_ in the wrong direction for it all to come toppling down.

If they lost Megatron's favor, there would be no second chances. They would hardly have enough time to pick themselves up before the other Decepticons descended upon them, ripping and tearing and clawing at all their little flaws and imperfections. There would be no calls for help, and no one to answer them.

The Stunticons were a team, and they would have no one's strength but their own as their defense.

It was a difficult task, keeping the Stunticons in line. There must have been some sort of hiccup in Vector Sigma when they had been created, or else Megatron's programming had been less than perfect, because instead of perfect soldiers they were more like unruly creations. It had been left to Motormaster to be their caretakers, and he had long since learned that his fists worked better than his words. A well-placed kick instead of gentle encouragement. A threat rather than a bribe.

His team was fractured, flawed, cracking at the edges, and it was Motormaster's job to make sure they didn't fall apart under their own weight. It was his job to deflate Drag Strip's ego, forcing him into realizing his place as just an arm rather than the greatest mech to ever live. It was his job to drag Dead End out of what whatever pit his mind was in so he would focus on the task at hand rather than his paint. It was his job to give Breakdown something to be more scared of than eyes, and Wildrider to find a reason to create terror in others or suffer it himself.

Motormaster knew risk, and he knew weakness, and he knew that his team could not afford to be weak. He would be the beast from within, a horrible storm that chased the others out in front of it if only to give them an incentive not to trip and fall. When, not if, they lost favor, his team needed to be prepared to deal with the backlash, and in their current state they simply would not survive.

He was the core, and it was his job to make his team stronger. If that meant breaking them down only to build them up, so be it.

Failure is not an option.


End file.
